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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 258591, member: 68&quot;]Perhaps he could have but these were made, issued, and released before he was president.</p><p><br /></p><p>The mint set Ikes are some of the most remarkable coins in the mint sets. Not because of their quality so much as the difficulty of finding the really nice coins.&nbsp; There are nice well made examples of every date and for some dates they are nearly common but the problem was that all these coins got banged up before being packaged. If you like nice clean coins you&#039;re actually better off looking in rolls because there are a few in them.&nbsp; The problem is that like most of the cu/ ni clads the roll coins will be poor strikes from heavily worn dies.&nbsp; When you find a gem it will lack a lot of detail.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>So the situation is that all of the Ikes verge on rare in high grade.&nbsp; Where Morgans can have pops in the tens&nbsp; of thousands in high grade, some of the Ikes are limited to a few dozen.&nbsp; Generally the pops reflect the availability of gems in mint sets but there are some exceptions.&nbsp; The &#039;74-P is exceedingly elusive in the mint set in gem because most specimens have poor surfaces.&nbsp; Among the nice ones there is excessive marking and a little problem with poor strikes.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The &#039;73 and &#039;73-D both come extremely nice but both are plagued by scratches and dings.&nbsp; The Philly also has a lot of retained planchet marking.&nbsp; The &#039;74-D is fairly easy in choice and not overly tough in gem.&nbsp; The &#039;76-D appears as a gem but is pretty tough even in near gem.&nbsp; The &#039;77-D comes exceedingly nice but you&#039;ll probably need to settle for a gem or choice gem.&nbsp; Top grade specimens are scarce despite lots of near misses.&nbsp; The &#039;78 and &#039;78-D also both come nice but the &#039;78 takes a little more effort.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>About 1% of mint set Ikes are near-gem or nicer.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Of course, the &#039;71 and &#039;72 issues aren&#039;t available in the sets.&nbsp; This is one of the important characteristics of all the modern sets; they can&#039;t be assembled from mint sets alone.&nbsp; You have to crack a few rolls.&nbsp; This makes the variety sets an incredible challenge since some of the rolls were never set aside so can&#039;t be found today.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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